Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Homer - The Odyssey IV

"I have two degrees in English and have never read The Odyssey cover to cover"

"It is a great story! I am a giant fan of mythology and this is quite an epic. This follows Oedipus's journey through the seas and to multiple mythical islands. It is fantastic!"

"This book was about a man named Odysseus who led a crew of men after the victory of the Trojan War. He encounters many different creatures such as the cyclops, and the witch. He fought them bravely and tried to save his crew. But the one journey that he couldn't prevail to defeat the monsters in the Land of the Dead. Odysseus had barely managed to escape in the end saving no one but himself from the Land of the Dead."

"Boring, full of nonsense, stupid, annoying, and just unrealistic! All the characters are selfish. Telemachus and Penelope are huge wimps, Suitors are stupid antagonists, Calypso is unrealistically dumb, Odysseus is senseless, the Gods have no motivation for ANYTHING they do, Athena randomly beautifies people for no reason whatsoever, Poseidon's a pathetic bastard, Gods are self-centered beings that require praying and sacrifice every second if someone was to go on an adventure. SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH! I really hate this book, I can't believe I had to read it for school. Why in the world does anyone think it's any good???"

"a book for which you need a translator / interpreter only to find out how booooring it is."

"This is the oldest story we have as a race, and it has got to be the first and oldest Mary Sue. So....Odysseus is gone ten years battling at Troy and FINALLY the war ends but it takes him another ten years to get back. He is 'brave and heroic' but really came across as a braggart and d-bag. He EXPECTS people to offer him hospitality and offer him presents, he is a CONSTANT liar. Even when he gets home, he lies about who he is to Minerva until he realizes who she is. (Never trust a man that can lie so easy.)
...
The icing on the cake, though, is the fact that he finally wants to get home because he misses his land and belongings. Not because he misses his wife and son. Wow. When he goes to Hades and speaks to the dead, his questions are all about wether his wife is true to him and taking care of his property and if his son is still holding his belongings.

Could a man be more self-centered? Why do we revere and praise this guy as a hero? The ONLY reason this book gets any star, is because I love Greek mythology. I thought, like with other classics I'm reading or re-reading as an adult, maybe I can interpret it differently and appreciate it better, whereas I might not have as a teen. Nope. Book sucks. I don't care if it is a classic and the oldest recorded story of man. It is a Mary-sue of wishful thinking and just as I would harshly judge a contemporary piece that replaces good story with fluff, I gladly shuffle this book back under my coffee table, hoping it does a better job of keeping my drinks from sliding to the floor, than it did at entertaining me."

"The Odyssey by Homer is a collection of 24 short 'books' of poems. I started reading it about two months ago, and I find it, unfortunately, very difficult to comprehend, as you might easily with Harry Potter or The Hunger Games."

"Even as an English major I don't think I will ever be mature enough to enjoy or understand this book."